Encouraging Apt Engagement?

When I encounter art of any sort, 
I find myself with these questions: 

What am I feeling now?
What is the piece saying?
What's the story (and backstory)?

[Oh, and how is it made?
--among many, many others.]

Now, my students usually want to start with "What does it mean?"

(A fine, though often
misleading or reductive
question to get to know
something, someone,
anything at all.
Where to begin,
then?)

Artists (and fellow audience-members), 
what responses 
and what responsive questions 
would you encourage 
me to encourage 
in my students?

From The Toolshed: Dan Duane's "Caught Inside"

You can tell I've been using this book for a while.

I think Caught Inside is an excellent choice for English 1A, especially if you want to work the local angle and model an encyclopedic approach to a subject. Also, Duane attempts to convey his passions here--passions for the sport or pursuit of surfing, yes, but also the Santa Cruz coast, for nature in general, for knowledge, for history, for story-telling, for awareness and engagement--and all such should always deserve respect.

Why wouldn't we want to model "passionate scholarship" (his phrase) to our students, to ourselves?

By the way, I've quoted my favorite Duane bit before here. Since I've been teaching his book for some years now, I should interview the author; some time back, he was willing, but circumstances got in my way. I should try his number again.

Howe's "The Dream"

THE DREAM

I had a dream in the day:

I laid my father's body down in a narrow boat

and sent him off along the riverbank with its cattails and grasses.

And the boat -- it was made of bark and wood bent when it was wet--

took him to his burial finally.

But a day or two later I realized it was myself I wanted

to lay down, hands crossed, eyes closed . . . .

Oh, the light coming up from down there,

the sweet smell of the water -- and finally, the sense of being carried

by a current I could not name or change.

--Marie Howe

from What the Living Do

My friend Meredith passed this poem to me some years back now as a handwritten card. I imagine that the occasion was my father's death or in the aftermath. I've had Meredith's card on a bulletin board for quite a while, and I realized the other day that I hadn't actually read the poem, hadn't actually read the words, for some time now. You know how things we put up on the walls or on such boards start out as declarations or celebrations, but in time become mere decorations, mere furniture. At least, that's what happens for me.

I like to move my books around in the shelves every so often. I'll shift from alphabetical and genre groupings to as random as possible, or by size and shape, or by color. Occasionally, of course, I'll put books together that I think would enjoy each other's company: Shakespeare's Hamlet next to Sophocles' Oedipus the King, for an obvious pairing, alongside McGuane's Panama, Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, Melville's Moby Dick, and Homer's Odyssey. Mostly, I've found if I move the books around just enough so that I see them as themselves, as individual works, and not as mere and merely familiar color patterns on the shelves, then I am more likely to pull one out and reread it, or to at least re-regard it with all the wonderful actions of the mind and heart (and even body) that follow such an engaged perusal.

So too with pictures and sculptures on the wall. So too with the pictures and poems and quotations and stuff (fishhooks, whistles, talismans) affixed to the two bulletin boards in my study. I need to move these materials around to not overlook them, to avoid merely taking them for granted.

In this case, I just happened to look directly at Meredith's card, at Howe's poem, in a receptive mood so that I saw it. Saw it, read it, considered it. (Hi Dad! Hope the water's fine. Wow, such water could feel pretty good, couldn't it? Just a bit of rest, just . . . .) I reread the poem, felt the poem, considered the gift of that poem.

And now I share that poem with you.

Thanks, Meredith, again.